How does Walmart keep its prices so low? The so-called guest workers from Mexico who peel crawfish at a Louisiana seafood supplier for Wal-Mart know: They are locked inside the plant, forced to work 24-hour shifts, cursed and threatened with beatings by shovel if they fail to make their quota, and endure constant surveillance at their nearby trailers from a boss who warns them, “You don’t want to know me as an enemy.” Having gone on strike from C.J.’s Seafood and filed federal complaints, they head to New York today to protest Wal-Mart, its subsidiaries and related boards – including Goldman Sachs – at their corporate headquarters and homes. Brought to you by the feisty National Guestworker Alliance.

Anger … a student protests against the working conditions at a Hershey’s factory. (Photo: AP)

Students from China, Africa and eastern Europe would work in a Hershey’s chocolate plant before using their earnings to travel the US and learn English.

“We have all seen Charlie’s chocolate factory,” said one student, 19-year-old Harika Duygu Ozer. Another said: “I thought we would see America like in movies.”

The factory, in Palmyra, Pennsylvania, did not live up to Roald Dahl’s thrilling world of chocolate waterfalls and infinite treats, however.

The 400 students, who each paid up to $US5940 ($5700) to join the State department’s cultural exchange scheme, claimed they were forced to become “captive workers”.

Shifts, often at night, consisted of lifting dozens of heavy boxes, trying to control fast-moving production lines, they said.

“They don’t care if you are small, you don’t have the power, you didn’t eat – they just care about their production,” one of the students said.

A spokesman for the National Guestworker Alliance, which is backing the group, said: “They were warned to stop complaining or they would be kicked out.”

The students walked out last week in protest at their conditions and pay, which after deductions and rent charges allegedly amounted to between $US40 and $US140 for 40 hours of work per week. They marched with dozens of supporters through Hershey itself.

Hershey said the plant was run by Exel, a logistics company. Exel said temporary workers were overseen by a third company, and that it had been told to stop hiring students from the scheme. It said students were informed of likely working conditions.

Please boycott Hershey. This is frigging ghastly. Now instead of shooting aliens, we are making them pay to come here, (to learn English? are you kidding me?) and be treated like this? Who the fuque are we? Amnesty and the HRW and ACLU should be all over this. Outrageous.

They probably DO employ plenty of USAns. But unlike the foreigners, the USAns sullenly accept the conditions and wages of their work without complaint. After all, the USA is the very best place in all the world, so surely, it couldn’t be any better than 60 hours of toil at a generous $7.50 per hour (less if you are called a ‘1099 contractor”), couldn’t it?

Nothing new here. The entire US labor movement in the late 19th/early 20th century was founded by foreign immigrants. The anglo-saxon protestant natives accepted their lot in life, or even filled the ranks of the scabs and Mr. Blocks (look it up).

How long will it take before people realize that capitalism is akin to slavery? Now the slave-drivers are subcontracted to insulate those who are really responsible. I’ve mentioned this before but it just doesn’t seem to sink in – labor law today still refers to “the master-servant relationship”. That is what capitalism is – just a different form of slavery; wage slavery and debt slavery. We need to be talking about emancipation from capitalism.